So Fake - A Senryu on Abe Shinzo and Fukushima

Every day this past week, yet another domestic retail icon has announced that food outlets under its roof or under its management have been making false claims as to the ingredients in their dishes. The revelations have stuck a carving knife into Japan's service industry's reputation as a place of dedication to providing the customer with only the very best.

Yesterday, it was the Hotel Okura's turn. (Link)

The scandal started with revelations at Hankyu Hotels in Osaka, where the first discrepancies in between what was described on the menus and what actually was in the kitchen came to light. Hankyu president Desaki Hiroshi, in a desperate effort to shield his organization from lawsuits and/or prosecution for fraud, provided the scandal with its catchphrase:

"I do not believes these were misrepresentations (giso). These were mistaken public announcements (gohyoshi). This was not something where the goal was to fool the customers and gain a profit from it."

(Link - J)

No, no, if you list particular ingredients on a menu, and accept money for the food you have served, that substitutions were made without the customer's knowledge could never have been for the purpose of gaining a profit.

Huh?

One Hakkaku Shurin of Sosa City, Chiba Prefecture, keeping track of the deceptions that really matter, submitted to the Tokyo Shimbun's Saturday topical senryu poetry feature the following 17-syllable gem:

「ブロック」と言う
誤表示も
偽装なの *

"Burokku" to iu
gohyoshi mo
giso na no

"Blocked"
that mistaken public announcement
was a misrepresentation too

Now who has said anything about something be blocked, recently?

Abe again insists that radioactive water at Fukushima plant is 'completely blocked'
Mainichi Shimbun

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has again repeated his insistence that radioactive water leaks at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant are being kept within the bay there.

"We are monitoring radiation levels, and they are far below the safety limits for radioactive materials. The effects of the contaminated water are being completely blocked," Abe said on Oct. 22 at the House of Representatives' Budget Committee, denying that radioactive materials are affecting the outside ocean. The remarks were made in response to a question by the Japanese Communist Party's Akira Kasai.

At the International Olympic Committee Session in September, Abe said that "the effects (of the radioactive water) are being completely blocked to inside of the bay" and "the situation is under control." However, in questioning during the Lower House plenary session on Oct. 16, he didn't use the word "completely" and qualified his "under control" statement with "overall," saying, "The effects are blocked to within the bay. Overall the situation is under control."

(Link)

Oh, yeah, that "burokku" -- oops, his bad!

I wonder whether it is the penumbra of the Imperial House's patronage of poetry, highlighted in a recent presentation at Temple University Japan by Professor Ben-Ami Shillony (Link) that provides the safe harbor allowing senryu to be the acceptable outlet for sarcastic hackdowns of our purported betters...

--
* Source: Tokyo Shimbun of 2 November 2013, page 5.

That Rising And Sinking Feeling Of Abenomics

Today may be the day when the shock comes.

No, not from the first opening of the climbing season on Mt. Fuji since the mountain and its environs were proclaimed UNESCO World Heritage sites, though the likely result is more crowding on what is an already overcrowded mountain.

[I am of two minds regarding the listing. The listing does grant the communities at the foot of the mountain the ability to start charging climbing fees eventually (Link). Such fees will be a source funding for facilities and environmental clean up on the mountain. However, the government's successful last second lobbying efforts to have Miho no Matsubara included in the listing, after the UNESCO panel recommended its exclusion (Link - J) smells of graft and/or vote trading.

So both the good and the bad on the big ledger.]

No, today is when we find out whether or not the heretofore restrained rise in consumer prices will stop being restrained, smacking shoppers in the face with a sudden, across-the-board jump in prices for household goods, electricity, transportation and just about everything else.

Consumers have been largely shielded from the effects of the Abe administration's destruction of the international standing of the yen. As of today, the start of the new quarter, the gloves will likely come off. Producers of flour, bread and meats have already announced significant jumps in prices for today (Link - J). All producers and service providers will be under pressure to follow suit, either openly or through stealth (Link - J). Even the luxury goods with their absurd pricing that gives them the leeway to swallow the effects of currency fluctuations, are set to rise today. (Link - J)

[Hint: to those who have been using the recent increases in the sales of high-end imported luxury goods and luxury cars as barometers of a hotter Japanese economy, think it possible that even the buyers of these items have been looking ahead and buying now, before the sticker shock comes, rather than loosening their purse strings.

Oh, and you might have wanted to mention that increased purchases of imported luxury goods are a net negative for GDP.]

In the anecdotal everyday, retailers have been acting peculiar. When I tried to buy a new bag (my old one being a tattered embarrassment) at a fast retail outlet, I was told there were no bags. When I asked whether this meant the chain no longer sells bags, the clerk told me peremptorily that no, they still sold bags. Only they did not have any left in the stock room.

A state of affairs which anyone can tell you never occurs unintentionally.

As for my favorite discount foreign food and coffee bean seller, it has until now not raised any of its prices -- an impossible state of affairs given that all of its products are imported. Ominously, it had a special sales offer through June 30, encouraging consumers to buy five flavors of beans in return for a reduction in price on a future purchase -- an offer looking suspiciously like the kind of warehouse cleaning a company would undertake before releasing a completely revamped line of products at a higher base price level.

The price rises for consumer goods will be large but not unreasonable, despite soaring raw materials and energy prices. Deeply enracinated deflationary expectations will force producers and retailers to moderate their increases, for now. They will, of course, have to swallow a part of the rise in the cost of inputs, meaning they will forgo regular profits.

Or so we hope.

On the level of local government services, the price for an hour's swim today at the local public swimming center costs 20% more than it did yesterday. Or it would, if the pool were not closed today in order for employees to reset the automated ticket dispensers and takers and replace all the signage. Considering that the water in the pool is heated by the incineration of the area's garbage, the jump in price, percentage-wise, seems uncalled for -- unless, of course, it is inordinately expensive to make a price change and making the jump in prices a big one is one way to recoup the cost of the transformation.

I do not have to elaborate how much the double punch -- a sudden jump in the prices of everyday goods and producers having to accept lower or no profits -- will likely affect personal consumption, remuneration and investment over the summer and into the fall.

But then, as any credible statistical evidence of declining consumption, income and/or investment will not appear until after the Liberal Democratic Party crushes all of its enemies in the July 21 House of Councillors election, no worries, eh, Mr. Abe?

Come On Down. Really.

Is there an economics paper that could explain the pricing strategies described here?

Midweek frozen food sales (personal note: I steer clear of the frozen foods section) make sense as a strategy for drawing in mid-week shoppers, reducing crowding on the weekends. However, Uniqlo's holding of sales on weekends, when the stores would be most crowded anyway, flies in the face of logic, unless drawing in even more folks somehow maximizes the employment of contractual, part time sales staff who are around only on the weekends.

Of course, if the goal is to clear off shelf space occupied by unsuccessful items...no that does not seem to work out either.

As for bureaucrats trying to save us from being taken in by sales prices off of what are imaginary suggested retail prices, one would think that our civil servants had better ways of deploying their talents and authority.

One would think that, yes.